The Michigan ACLU has joined Detroit horrorcore rap group Insane Clown Posse in its lawsuit against the FBI and the Justice Department. The suit alleges the FBI wrongly classified ICP fans — known as juggalos — as a criminal gang.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Detroit Wednesday, alleges that the U.S. government provoked unwarranted law-enforcement harassment of juggalos when they identified them as “a loosely organized hybrid gang” in the FBI’s 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment. Four fans have joined the suit as plaintiffs.

Juggalos and juggalettes, as female fans are known, maintain a distinctive appearance, often wearing face paint, ICP-related tattoos and jewelry featuring “the hatchet man,” the distinctive logo of Psychopathic Records, which was co-founded by ICP’s members in 1991.

Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope — the stage names of members Joseph Bruce and Joseph Utsler, the group’s two members — have been battling the federal government in court since 2012 to obtain information about what precipitated the government’s decision to label juggalos a gang. So far, they’ve received copies of news stories about crimes committed by suspects fitting the description of juggalos.

In a press conference Wednesday morning, Violent J described how the FBI’s gang designation has negatively impacted the lives of hard-core ICP fans across the U.S.

“The FBI gang designation has caused real and lasting harm to the lives of the juggalos. Parents have lost custody of their kids, they’ve been fired from jobs, they’ve been denied housing they’ve been subjected to illegal searches and sometimes added to gang database for walking down the street wearing an ICP T-shirt,” Violent J said at a Wednesday morning press conference.

“That’s insane, if you think about it,” he added.

In a tweet published Wednesday, the ACLU of Michigan wrote “it may not be your cup of tea, but it’s not a gang.”

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